In today’s news and commentary, tensions increase between New York City teachers and Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration, while an Administrative Law Judge finds that a major Brooklyn hospital committed an unfair labor practice against its workers. 

Last week, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), one of the largest local chapters of a teachers’ union in the country, threatened to drop its support of New York City’s reading curriculum overhaul, known as NYC Reads. In response to a report that showed sinking reading proficiency among students, UFT President Michael Mulgrew charged the Department of Education with being “completely incompetent and irresponsible in its implementation” of the curriculum changes, criticizing the high number of student assessments that the curriculum changes call for and a lack of flexibility in allowing teachers to implement the changes at their own pace. The Department of Education disputed those claims, stating that the only change in the city’s reading curriculum last year was to require that schools use city-approved intervention programs. 

On Thursday, Administrative Law Judge Michael P. Silverstein ruled that New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, a major hospital in New York City, violated Section 8(a)(5) of the NLRA by changing its dress code policy without first bargaining with its union. As part of the ruling, the judge rejected the hospital’s argument that its conduct was protected by a management rights clause, noting that the hospital’s own negotiators treated the dress code change as a required subject of negotiations by placing a formal proposal of the change on the bargaining table. The judge ordered the hospital to rescind the new policy and reverse any disciplinary actions that had begun against employees who did not comply with the dress code change.